Eve of an examination

College time is really interesting. Being exposed to the diverse crowd, their ideas and lifestyle does fascinate and at times intimidate you.

In a college where the library isn't open all night long (and it wouldn't matter even if it were), the eve of an examination can be a testing time for any undergraduate. Every room shares its walls with three other rooms. And yes, the walls aren't sound proofed. Hence with crude accusations of you copulating with your family members flying left right and centre, in languages which originated in the south, the north and the west, you really get to experience what a melting pot college really is. And it's viral. One usage of "bhenchod" only invites the same from the other end and this is really the domino effect that we're talking about. It comes to a point where you have to seriously make an effort to listen closely to what is being said and really dig through the surface of the conversation which primarily consists of bhenchods and the occasional one with yo mother. But since your eyes are on a powerpoint presentation teaching you how to manage a database and rules of normalization, you pretty much just hear the cuss words.

Music and intoxicants only add to the brew. As the odour of fermentation sets in and the smoke settles, as the loud punjab meets norway mashed up playlist starts blaring right into your ear and as the bitching starts, you realise that the world isn't flat after all. 

Youth Ideologies

Times of India was doing a feature on the youth and a couple of articles I wrote and compiled for them got published in today's paper. Palvi buzzes me on gtalk saying "nice article dude" and I ask her "What article are you talking about?". It had been a little while since I had mailed the nice folks at TOI so it might have skipped my memory. However it was nice to see my name printed in the papers. 

Here are the links:

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Skin=TOI&Daily=TOIH&Enter=true&GZ=T

Apart from that today has been a good day. First off I met Harshil of Foxy Moron, a young entrepreneur who was previously associated with WATConsult. He had come down to the desert to give a talk on web2.0 and advertising. Having corresponded with him over the phone and email, it was nice meeting the man in person and getting his views on certain issues that are of relevance to me.

And in the night I found out that a friend of mine whom I had helped a little regarding the preliminary selection finally made it through to the MUN at Manipal University. No points for guessing which nation he is representing there. And another piece of advice, don't get too drunk bro. 

New Skin

I changed the blog's template today. Got a little tired of the previous one. I always wanted to have a three column template but couldn't find the right color combination. I simply love this one. Now am playing around with it.

Rants

Disappointment. The word is apt to describe my frame of mind.

Quizzing at Rendezvous 2k8 was a disaster. No, this isn’t a post about how good I felt about the quizzing culture here at BITS, Pilani (which I did), but rather how sorry I felt for the state of things at IITD.

The fest boasts of huge sponsors and mega events and a cracking rock show, then why oh why is the organization of the quizzes so bad? I’m sure the teams that came were pretty good. Teams from Stephen’s, NSIT with whom I had quizzed earlier were there and they simply sighed, saying that it’s nothing new.

Of the many inferences that I made after returning from the fest with regards to quizzing, one of them was that the eliminations and finals had to be made by different people.

A lot of questions in the finals were “lifted” from Wikipedia. How do I know this? I spotted a [2] after a sentence on numerous occasions. Also, someone should get these gentlemen acquainted to the concept of using a PowerPoint presentation to host their quizzes rather presenting us with a compilation of notepad files, each containing one question. It’s never too late to shift, you know. Another suggestion from my end would be to rename the audio clip that you are playing rather than put the clip in a folder named "question 12-do not open", it just tests the audience's patience. And please for Christ's sake dont put in some 85 x 123 size pics and then try to zoom in, instead use larger pics, and if you can't find larger pictures then don't put the question in an AVQ.

We made it past the elims for both the quizzes; one whose name I don’t quite remember and Kombat, the open quiz. In the finals, we were leading for a major portion of the time in the first quiz but ultimately messed ourselves up when we didn’t go for the theme and that resulted in us coming fourth. In the second quiz, we just didn’t hit the right opportunities but oh well, congrats to Vivek, Aravind and King for winning that one.

And then came the blow. Zoom in. The Audio Visual Quiz. Which was about 95% VQ, since there was one audio clip in the whole quiz. Now for the questions, they show us a picture of the Google Chrome comic and didn’t ask us to identify the comic, but instead to identify the creator. WTF?

On another topic: I like the new improved zemanta.

Phone conversations

Me: Hey, yo yo, wassap!

Friend: Heylooo. Acha, Rishabh, tell me something. How long have we known D?

Me: Around 7-8 years I suppose. Why?

Friend: Hmm and in that time did you ever bother to ask what her dad’s occupation was?

Me: Abey, don’t be silly; of course, he’s always in Kolkata right?

Friend: Right and doing what?

Me: Umm…he’s working with…hmm…I always thought he was running some sort of business there.

Friend: Rishabh! He is not a shopkeeper!

Me: No no no baba! I am not calling him a shopkeeper, as in a full fledged business. Something to do with raw material I suppose.

Friend: Oh you suppose is it?

Me: Well, it is the rational thing to assume right? The man is out of station most of the time; I assumed he was running some sort of business from outside.

Friend: Alright, I shall not even bother to ask you why you just said that. Moving on; so I was talking to D today and she was telling me how he’s always busy doing something or the other.

Me: Ahuh…

Friend: Oh, FYI, he is a scientist and works for BARC.

Me: Whoa. That’s interesting. Cool, didn’t know her dad fiddles around with atomic energy. I think she told me he goes to France a lot.

Friend: Fuck you, he goes to Switzerland. Geneva to be precise.

Me: Ah good fun.

Friend: Rishabh…

Me: What?

Friend: I said he goes to Geneva from time to time.

Me: Alright, so?

Friend: And do you know what’s happening in Geneva as we speak?

(Silence for a few seconds)

Me: (whispers) Oh fuck…

Friend: He fucking works with CERN. He’s like OUT THERE! You know those coat wearing scientist folks with those glasses who keep jotting down stuff and nodding every instant? He's probably like one of them.

A couple of hours later

D: Hello

M: WTF! Your dad works with the CERN guys. You never told us. Hell, I didn't event know that he was working for BARC!

D: Bah, I thought I did. I dunno re, he calls up the other day and starts rambling about all this science stuff.

M: You mean THE science stuff, you know the Large muthafuckin Hadron Collider stuff.

D: Yeah, that only.

M: And…

D: And what?

M: Are we going to die or live?

D: Some shit only. We will live re. He was saying how its all being blown outta proportion, all this fuss about that big machine they have. He was explaining to me some science thing. I couldn’t understand anything and got bored easily.

M: That’s understandable.

D: Yeah, so don't worry, there will be no black hole on this planet and I can finish my designs in peace (she studies at NIFT)…so..wassup?

Blogging resumes

Been caught up this week.

Blogging shall resume here and also here
And since you are here, might as well check this out.

Election time@ BITS: Directory

With more and more posts about the BITSian elections being posted, I thought about making a directory of all such blogs. This list in no way exhaustive, do leave additional links in the comments section.
(Majority of the credit goes to the Vineets [Pandey and Keshari] for compiling the initial list on google reader, from where the following list was mercilessly flicked) :)

Abhilash, Electrical, 03-07,

Keerthi Kiran, Instrumentation, 04-08,
Sriram.V , Electrical,04-08

Abhishek Nayak, Biological Science,05-09
Chinmay Kulkarni, Computer Science,05-09


Ashutosh, 06-10
Abhiram, Computer Science, 06-10,
Anurag Dutta, Computer Science, 06-10
Atin Bhattacharya, Physics & Computer Science, 06-11
Rishabh Kaul, Economics & Civil, 06-11
Rachit Chandra, Computer Science(Presidential Candidate),06-10
Shoaib, Computer Science, 06-10
Shruti Shah, Chemistry & Civil,06-11
Shushant, Mechanical, 06-10
Vineet Keshari, Computer Science, 06-10


Pranav, Instrumentation, 07-11

Suddenly Sarah

For most of us on this side of the globe, Sarah Palin is just another person. She's the governor of a state cut off from mainland America,and now is one step away from becoming the next Vice President of USA.

She was picked by McCain 3 days ago and I somehow feel that he did it to capitalise on the junta that felt that Obama "fucked" Hilary up. She's pro life, pro guns, anti-queer and has 5 kids. It's so easy for someone to judge you for objectifying her. Because she looks like this

Recently she announced that her 17 year old unmarried daughter Bristol, was pregnant. And also that Bristol intended on marrying the father of the child. I wonder if the father actually had a choice. True, that free will exists; however few teenagers would have the balls (ok, bad pun) to express it in front of a politically charged mommy who is big time pro guns. And then starts the rumours. As Reuters points here

McCain officials said the news of the daughter's pregnancy was being released to rebut what one aide called "mud-slinging and lies" that have circulated on liberal blog sites.

According to these rumors, Sarah Palin had faked a pregnancy and pretended to have given birth in April to her fifth child, a son named Trig who has Down syndrome. The rumor was that Trig was actually Bristol Palin's child and that Sarah Palin was the grandmother.

And through Gaurav's blog I found out that there exists this.

On another note, don't be surprised if you see a sudden overwhelming increase in posts relating to BITS Pilani politics. Coup d'etat is something one would never associate with the campus, however in a classic case of events, a coup pretty much sums up what one of the (un)presidential candidate pulled off yesterday. Respect to him for showing how easily the system can be mocked.

Closing thought: You know how how sometimes they say that be very sure about what to ask for, coz you might just get it?

Changing guard

Deriving inspiration from one of the most popular bloggers in India, Amit Varma

Todays WTF Quote is attributed to Atin. The guy has been quite an evangelist for the organisations he's been affiliated to in the last few months with his hard hitting citizen journalism and "straight from the heart" posts. Avoiding bureaucracy and not bothering with disclaimers, I suggest its about time all you people out there add him to your blogroll, trust me, you shall not regret it.

But after months of awesomeness comprising of this, this and most recently this he goes ahead and performs a low blow, a cheapshot or whatever you might call it.

It's time I became a bit more mature and started expressing myself more objectively and sensibly. It's time to grow up.

I wonder what would cause such a move. But that being said, he is a revolutionary. Little does he realize how much impact he's beginning to have on people. As I write this post, there are discussions about what is he going to write about in his next post. And amongst smaller groups he's being hailed as the next big thing (a title previously adorned by Brock Lesner ).

Here's to you sir.

Psst: My sources reveal to me that he's been stealing a substantial amount (classified) of traffic thats coming in from outside.